Summary
\nThis article argues against a view of design as a process which can be described according to an \"atomistic language model\" and formal logic. Rather, the authors argue for design as a process governed by the principles of hermeneutic and interpretation, following Gadamer's theory about the hermeneutic circle.
\nThe authors note that according to Gadamer's hermeneutic, the whole can not be understood without first understanding the parts, and the parts can not be understood without understanding the whole. Thus, understanding is always built upon a pre-understanding (\"prejudice\"), which is fore-cast as a projection and questioned in the meeting with the text.
\n\n\n\"In contrast to the deductive-nomological and inductive methods of explanation, which proceed by way of conclusions logically drawn from premises, the design process has no premises or conclusions. The whole and the parts of the interpretive situation are used neither deductively nor inductively, but as entities which confer understanding, as speakers in a dialogical oscillation between interpretation and assessment. It starts with no categorically definite question, problem, explanandum or conclusion; nor, equally, does it start from premises. The project—the perfected whole which is aimed for—only becomes more definite and determinate as the particularities of the situation become clearer; and these, in turn, are only understood with greater clarity as the whole is disclosed. In retrospect, both the “conclusion” and the “premises” are seen to have been incoherent at the beginning of the interpretive process.
\nDesigning is primarily an interpretative activity. It is an activity that pertains to understanding a design situation rather than to having a knowledge of formulae, theorems and algorithms. Designing is a hermeneutical rather than an epistemological event. In the hermeneutical event application is interwoven with and wholly inseparable from interpretation and understanding; in the epistemological event, knowledge and its application are separate and sequential: knowledge is prior to its application. The answers to the questions arising in the situation are known in advance. They do not vary according to peculiar exigencies or contingencies. In the epistemological schema, theory precedes practice. In the hermeneutical event theory cannot be divorced from practice. The theory, such as it is, only comes into consciousness, is only clarified, disclosed, in the process of its application. Theory and practice coalesce in the act of interpretation; general principles are revealed as what they are, are revealed to be what they are, come to be understood in their being, in the unfolding of their application in the event.\" (86-87 [p. 28 in my copy])
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The authors also point out how a hermeneutical understanding of the design process can help shedding light on creative processes, without submitting to romantic notions of a genius subject:
\n\n\n\"The non-logical nature of the design process is shown in that, as was said
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previously, a single factor in the design situation can trigger the whole design process. Something in a part evokes a preconception of the whole. Explanations of such “leaps” cannot be encompassed by logic; but they are comfortably accommodated within the hermeneutic horizon, and without resort to notions of intuition, creativity, and the other processes supposedly hidden beyond scrutiny in the “black box” of subjectivity.\" (p. 87 [29])
The authors also underline that hermeneutics is not to be understood as a scientific method, but rather as a description of a process that is present in any form of understanding. It should be noted that, following Gadamer, they exclude certain forms of rational thought from the realm of \"understanding\" - mathematical or formal logical propositions, for instance, can not strictly speaking be understood, but only accepted or rejected. And it also seems that they use the word \"method\" in a sense that refers quite strictly to the rigorous methods of natural science, not to the usually looser understanding of methodology in the humanities.
\n\n\n\"The hermeneutical nature of the design event has nothing to do with methodological analysis or hypothesis forming. A question in a dialogical situation projects a preliminary and provisional way of seeing. The question has its own horizon of expectations, which are subject to change according to the answer. Analysis and methodical questioning, by contrast, operate within a structure of inflexible presuppositions, which are not in turn called into question. The answer to the question is always expected to lie within the framework of the structure. The testing of a hypothesis is not a dialogical questioning, in which the answer in turn asks questions of the questioner, that is, in which the dialogue of question and answer breaks out of the framework of the methodological structure. In true dialogue the other’s arguments are seen as a way of questioning oneself, and thus of transforming one’s own understanding. In logical discourse, by contrast, such a self- questioning is not possible.\" (87 [29])
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The authors also point out the open-endedness of the design process: \"The design process is an uncovering of tacit understanding, and this hidden understanding is not something fixed, crystalline, frozen. [...] Understanding is always in process, and this process is unending.\" (89 [31]) They distinguish tacit understanding from the concept of tacit knowledge, without explaining much further.
\nFinally, the authors argue that basing the design process on \"codified knowledge\" and \"the atomistic model\" would hamper understanding because it \"excludes questioning\" and \"renders the hermeneutic circle vicious. It pre-establishes projected meanings so that only what has been previously selected as knowable can become known, thus blocking the acquisition of new knowledge or understanding\" (91 [33]). This leads to the following rejection of algorithmic approaches to design:
\n\n\n\"An algorithm, whether or not it makes explicit use of linguistic models, selects out the commonalities of different design situations. It works in the domain of universals, of what is shared by every member of a class. Such is the nature of scientific laws. But in the realm of design, as in the human sciences, it is precisely the distinctive, the particular, the unique, the unrepeated and the unrepeatable, the idiosyncratic, that is important. Difference, not sameness, is the proper focus of study. It is not what this design situation has in common with all other design situations, or what this sequence of design operations shares with all others that is important, but what marks it out as special, individual, distinctive—as it is in our dealings with people.\" (92 [33-34])
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I find this article highly valuable to my own understanding of digital design as a tool for humanities research. If we accept that digital media are an appropriate object for humanities research, and that a design process can be used as a hermeneutic tool, it becomes fairly obvious how design can further a humanistic analysis. Even so, it seems clear that the description of a methoc involving design might need to be a little more specific - as hermeneutics in themselves are not described as a \"method\" - but the arguments presented here help us a long way.
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